


5 Times Batman Didn't Tell Stephanie Brown to Go Home

by torches



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, five things
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-25
Updated: 2009-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-03 18:23:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20928
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/torches/pseuds/torches
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steph can be: anything she wants to be, nothing she isn't already, what she loves, what she's afraid of, everything she deserves.</p><p>Pick one.  (Or not.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	5 Times Batman Didn't Tell Stephanie Brown to Go Home

i. _wow_

Steph never lets him say "You shouldn't be out on the streets"; she doesn't care if he believes it, because she's not interested in hearing it.

And he doesn't stop her, every night she's out there in the skies and in the streets, a dark blur in the face of guns and knives and rapists and sick, mutated freaks. He doesn't say anything the time she comes home and tapes herself up after a punch from Killer Croc lands too hard and she can feel her chest crack through the protective layers of kevlar and ceramic. He doesn't say anything the next time, when it's the Scarecrow and she gets home pale and twitchy and jumping at every shadow.

Robin's only been dead a few months; she doesn't know the whole story, but she knows Gotham won't protect itself, not from idiots like her father or the actual _dangerous_ criminals. And she can do this.

She can do this if she has to.

So it's a shock when, one night, she runs into the big shadow, the Batman, the only darkness in Gotham's streets that _isn't_ lethal, and he settles in beside her like they've always fit this well together.

She stares at him through her face mask and he doesn't smile at her.

"Hh. Your left foot drags when you kick to the chest. That could be lethal someday."

"Then teach me," she says, with a bravado she doesn't know how to feel this close to that swallowing, bulky shadow.

"I wasn't correcting you to be _nice_," the Batman says, and turns as the Batmobile pulls up at the other end of the alley. "It wasn't a request."

And Steph can't - quite - hide the whoop of relief, but she manages to channel it into a leaping fistpump instead of anything embarrassing before she runs after him.

ii. _how to be dead_

Bruce put her costume where Jason's used to be. She's not sure how to take that.

iii. _run_

Robin spins through the air with brazen ease, laughing, a gold and green and red comet carrying all the power and ferocity of Gotham's best impulses in her wake, and Batman follows; they strike in unison and thieves scatter like dominoes, falling face-up.

Robin flips backward, catching a tank-sized man under his chin and sending him crashing backwards, then darts back in to catch two across their cheeks with the thick soles of her boots. She lands with a flourish - and ducks as a knife slices through the air where she isn't anymore.

Laughter as her fist crashes into his stomach and the man crumples, and then they're down and done.

Batman fires a zipline into the sky. Later, they monitor police scanners while Robin perches on a gargoyle and eats an MRE for breakfast, making a face at the flavor.

Batman smiles - and then word comes in that the Ventriloquist has hijacked the opera, and they're off.

iv. _grazed knees_

Cass finds her first. "You're dead," she says, and Steph meets Cass' face and lets her see the wear and tear digging herself up out of a grave left behind. Cass just meets her gaze evenly, and - not without a flicker of sympathy, or Steph's a blind idiot.

"Nothing's permanent," Steph says, smiling hard.

"Are you - you?" Cass holds her head in a way where the meaning's impossible to miss - do i trust you - and seems to melt halfway back into the shadows.

Steph lowers her eyes. "I don't know," she says, and shrugs. "I died. I don't know what to do now."

Steph's not surprised Cass doesn't jump when the extra shadow comes out of nowhere. "There's a place for you in the cave, if you need it," Batman says, carefully, watching her through those empty lenses he always keeps down around people he doesn't trust.

The next smile is less sharp but less full. "I guess - yeah, I think I'd like that."

And she's cold, and it's not like she can feel her heartbeat anymore, but breathing doesn't feel so hard to remember for once.

v. _somewhere a clock is ticking_

Stephanie Brown has a tombstone.

The Spoiler has a case.

Steph has a room, in Wayne Manor, that she shares with Tim, and she sees Cass every night, and sometimes she kicks the Red Hood in the face - er, helmet. Batman doesn't smile, but sometimes she gets Bruce to do it when he's not paying attention. Alfred bakes cookies on the weekends, and makes sure there's hot soup in the car for the really late nights.

Life is good.

And nobody dies (most of the time).


End file.
